Chapter One
“How do you get women to, you know, eat?” Rome Hard asked.
James looked at his youngest brother, brow raised, wondering where the question had even come from.
“You don’t bring it up, ever!” Jane, their mother, said.
“But seriously, there’s no way a woman can survive on celery. I don’t get it.” Rome pouted and fingered his food like it had some kind of disease.
“Maybe you should offer to pay for more than a salad,” Caleb said. He was the middle child, covered in ink—the rebel.
James watched his brothers, smirking as Rome tried to find something to throw at Caleb.
“I did offer to pay for whatever she wanted. I had a big juicy steak, and what did she have? Carrot sticks. Who orders salad without all the trimmings, at least? What about a dressing? Ugh, it made me uncomfortable. How can I even enjoy my food when I’m sure she didn’t even put it to her lips?” Rome wrinkled his nose.
“Who was your precious date?” James asked.
“Catherine Wire.”
Caleb groaned. “Nah, you see, there’s no way you’re getting much more than your di— I mean, er, there’s just no way you’re going to get much past her lips besides what she wants.”
James snorted, trying to hide it in his coffee cup. Their father glared at them, and then Jane shook her head. “Oh, please. You think I don’t know what you boys are talking about? I’m not some little virgin and I’m under no illusion about what my boys are capable of either. I’m also very much aware that Miss Wire has tasted all three of my sons at one time or another. Didn’t she go to school with you, James?”
“That she did.”
“Don’t even try to pretend you boys are innocent. You’re Hard boys, and I know what the girls all say. Once you’re hard, there’s no stopping until you’re … well, not.” She put her hands on Theodore’s shoulders.
Their father looked up at his wife with all the love in the world shining in his eyes. “We were young once.”
“We were, and your father was a Hard boy as well. You think I don’t know what you get up to? If I remember correctly, your father was a right jerk.”
“Boys, I used women. Took them, discarded them.”
Jane smiled. “Until he met me.”
“First woman in the world to never give me the time of day.” Theodore grabbed her hand, pressing a kiss to her inner wrist. This wasn’t the first time they’d heard this story. It was one their parents had told them many times.
“There was no way I was going to give my love to a man who liked to crush women’s hearts. That wasn’t who I was.”
“I pursued her for months. It took us making a bet to actually getting you to go out with me.”
“Only because you saved the cat in the tree and poor Whiskers hadn’t eaten in days. I was worried.”
Their mother was an animal lover. They had six dogs, four cats, and she’d even tried to adopt a small farm, but that was when their father had put his foot down.
“How does this help me to get a woman to eat?” Rome asked.
Jane laughed. “Find the right woman and believe me, you’ll know when she’s the right one. For now, do with Catherine what I know you care about. Boys. They really think we don’t know what’s on their minds.” She left the kitchen to go out to feed the dogs.
“Are you really hung up over Catherine not eating?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t know. It’s not normal, right?”
“Is this because you kept giving your favorite teacher all of your candy and fruit?” James asked.
Everyone knew when Rome was fifteen years old, one of the youngest teachers at school, Miss Evergreen, captured his heart. He had the biggest crush on her, and it was one of the first times a Hard boy became a nerd. Their reputation was fundamentally ruined because of it.
Not really.
There was no way anyone could call him or Caleb a nice guy.
Rome glared at him. “I guess you’re going to start looking at all the pretty flowers now, aren’t you?”
“Why are we talking about flowers?” Jane asked, coming back into the kitchen, a little out of breath.
“Eliza is coming back to town,” Caleb said.
“Eliza?” Theodore asked.
“Elizabeth Reid,” James said. “She’s coming back to town, living with her Aunt Betty again.” His jaw clenched as Rome started to smirk.
“Didn’t you have a crush on her?”
“No,” he said.
“You were going to ask her to prom,” Rome said.
James looked at his coffee, seeing it as far more inviting than anything else in their conversation. He didn’t need to hear what his brothers thought. Eliza. She hated her name Elizabeth. He never knew why, but whenever someone called her by her full name, she’d always correct them, and say Eliza. Even teachers.
Damn it.
He’d tried not to think about the blonde spitfire who’d consumed most of his teenage thoughts. She’d been so incredibly sweet most of the time. Unless someone pissed her off. She’d been placid until someone either bullied a person who was vulnerable or smaller. Then the spitfire would come out, and there was no stopping her on the warpath. Those blue eyes of hers, angry and ready to hurt whoever she set her sights on.
Of course, he’d never gotten the chance to ask her out.
Eliza had no parents. At least from what he’d heard, she’d been left in an old trailer at the age of three. She was never fed, rarely clothed, and it was only when her aunt Betty went to see her sister that she realized what had happened. Eliza had been abandoned. Her parents didn’t even care enough to put her into foster care or take her to someone who loved her.
From that moment on, Aunt Betty, the florist, became her mother, her guardian, her everything.
He shouldn’t have even known as much as he did, but he was obsessed with Eliza.
“And I didn’t ask her to prom.”
“Did she even go to prom?” Caleb asked.
“No, she didn’t.” She’d stayed at home with her aunt Betty. He’d ended up going to the prom on his own and leaving early. It had been so incredibly lame. Now, he was here thinking about her again.
“I like Eliza. She’s sweet. You could do worse, son,” Jane said. “Yeah, I can see her as a daughter-in-law.”
“Mom, seriously, there’s no way anything like that is even happening. It’s not going to happen. I can promise you that.”
“And why can you promise me that?”
James looked at his mother, a little perplexed.
“Because that would involve him having to talk to her, am I right?” Rome asked.
He would gladly be an only child.
“And James gets all tongue-tied around beautiful women, and he thinks she’s so beautiful.”
“Shut the fuck up.” James got to his feet. “I’ve got work to do and it doesn’t involve sitting around all day listening to you two.”
“Would it help if I added this?” Caleb asked, lifting his hand to his face, kissing and making out with it.
“That’s enough,” Theodore said, but James was already out the door.